Jay Rosen (and Barry Eisler) on the surveillance state’s efforts to make journalism harder, slower, less secure. The gist: why would they destroy hard drives they know there are copies of, and detain couriers they know they’ll have to release?

The obvious answer is, of course, simple harassment, but, then with “intelligence” work, the simple answer is rarely the *only* answer. As Mark pointed out, they may have been checking to see what was going to show up in the months to come. They may have also been attempting to simply slow the dissemination of the information, even if only for a few days. Or, they may have been trying to draw attention away from something else by purposely making a scene; classic misdirection.